All The Things I Do For My Job
by cuby18
Summary: We all know that Ian Rider taught Alex the majority of things that helped him survive on the missions. However, some of his missions required different areas of knowledge. Written for the Easter Fic Exchange 2018.


**For the author of this prompt:**

 **"In preparation for his various covers, Alex gets to learn all sorts of esoteric things."**

All The Things I Do For My Job

You know all those times when I was complaining about my missions hindering my learning process by keeping me away from school for months with no time to properly catch up with my work? Well, I'm taking it all back. Or at least the part where I mentioned it to Blunt. I didn't expect him to take my complaints seriously (it's not like he ever had before). But no, he decided it would be a good idea to further my education by taking up some courses and hobbies that might help me one day on some mission.

I was staring at Blunt, trying to determinate whether he had finally lost it. Or at least tried to. It's kind of hard to do so when you're simultaneously trying to pick your jaw from the floor.

''You want me to learn what?'' I demanded after regaining my speaking abilities.

''I want you to learn everything you can about haruspices, their origins and especially how to predict future using their methods,'' repeated Blunt emotionlessly.

''Just to make certain I understood you completely. You want me to learn all I can about the Roman superstition that is not even practised today anymore and to learn its practice?'' I emphasised each of my words to somewhat get my message across, even if it seemed very unlikely given our history.

''Exactly,'' nodded Blunt and turned another page of the report he started reading while I was sitting there stupefied by his words.

I looked pleadingly at Jones that was standing at his side, suspiciously silent compared to our others encounters. She simply returned my gaze as is if to say that it was out of her hands.

''Oh, and while you're at it it might be good to also learn some Latin. Smithers should be able to provide you with some literature on both.'' That was a clear dismissal. I slowly stood and with one last glance at Jones left the office in search of Smithers, hoping that he would be able to shed some light on the situation.

I was cursing Blunt. As it turned out, his task wasn't just something he had made up just to torture me. No, it was his plan all along for me to infiltrate some stupid cult that actually practised all these Roman habits and superstitions and in order to gain their trust I had to show my skills as a haruspex by predicting the future from the real sheep liver. I thought I was going to be sick and it took all my self-control not to throw up right there and destroy any and all chances of ever finding out what they were planning on doing with the ridiculous amount of pigeons they were collecting for the last three months, an activity that put them on MI6's radar. Not that it helped all that much as I was found up almost immediately – why does every organisation I'm sent to spy on work with SCORPIA?- taken a prisoner and set to be dissected. They wanted to practice divination on my own entrails with me in the role of the sacrificed prisoner. I had managed to escape but it was a close call and now I was lying there waiting for my back-up to pick me up.

I never found out what they were planning with all the pigeons; both Blunt and Jones were of opinion that I didn't need to know and based on their facial expression when they passed this information to me I decided that I was better off not knowing. Something that makes Blunt a tiny bit green in the face is definitely something you don't want to know.

I was once again in Blunt's office and despite my weariness, I had to admit that my current orders didn't sound too bad. All I had to do was get into the monastery and stay there long enough to learn some of their receipts, namely for their eggnog and herbal liqueur. Or, at least, it didn't sound too bad at first, that is before he told me that monastery only accepted women, which required form me to also disguise myself as a nun and then join them. Let's just say that it took a lot of learning to get all prayers and daily routines down and knowing them well enough to be seen as someone that knows their way around all the religious stuff. But, the highlight was, that I had actually learned quite a lot about the preparation of the eggnog and also got to drink some of it. The drinking, unfortunately, led to them seeing through my cover as I had some trouble maintaining it while inebriated, but it was fun.

It almost made it worth later on when I had to infiltrate another monastery (this time with monks) and get them drunk in order to find the one that was secretly sending information he gathered to some terrorist organisation. The bright side of that mission was that I wasn't captured, but my conscious was weighing heavily on me because I got the poor unsuspecting monks drunk. All in all, it made for a pretty successful mission.

Sadly, my adventures with Latin and old practices didn't end there; just two short months later I was sent to Rome where I was supposed to infiltrate yet another secret organisation that followed the example of old Christians in the time of emperor Nero that were forced to hold meetings in the catacombs to escape persecution – this organisation was hiding there so they could plot undisturbed and also to avoid the persecution of law enforcement. However, what I wanted to say was, that I was once again sent on a mission, this time in Rome. Based on its location I expected it to be quite warm, even during the winter months. I couldn't be further away from the truth. It was chillingly cold. The only time I was actually warm was while in the catacombs that were, strangely enough, a lot warmer. It probably became the only mission where I was happy to be sent to spy on someone. Of course, Latin knowledge in itself wasn't enough; I was also forced to learn around fifty different greetings in order to infiltrate the organisation and also tons of useless information pertaining Roman history and art. While there I used the total of three greetings and ate gallons of ice-cream while on break. There are certain things that even cold can't keep away from you and ice-cream is definitely one of them. It even makes the whole experience quite enjoyable despite my gladiator fight at the end (rather don't ask how it happened; I slipped a bit during a conversation and the rest is history).

But, despite everything unsavoury that followed my Latin lessons I actually found a way to utilise this new knowledge in school when I managed to unintentionally impress my History teacher when I started sprouting random facts about Ancient Rome, accompanied by Latin quotes.

 **I hope it meets your expectations. The story itself was largely influenced by my recent trip to Rome, preparations for** **the said trip and my Latin lessons.**


End file.
